 Good evening. Good evening. Buenos noches, cabasol, what's happening? Obviously, I want to thank members of the San Francisco Library for organizing this wonderful event. So important. I think for all of us, we live in those sort of times where we have banned books. Can you believe that? People burning the Dixie Chicks. I remember when they were burning Pablo Neruda, in fact, on the streets of Santiago. But there's a set of books that I would really love to see made public so that anybody who wanted access to them could have access to them. They're not so much a banned books. They're secret books, therefore banned from our eyes. And I'm talking about the accounting books of the Pentagon. Now, that's something I would like to see opened. I'm going to read from one of the great poets of Latin America, especially during the violent decades of Central America the 1970s, the 1980s. Actually, most everything that Roque Dalton wrote in his lifetime was banned from El Salvador. And much of his work, in fact, circulated in Mimeograph formed from hand to hand. Perhaps one day, especially for Latin American writers, we should have a banned Mimeograph poem day. I want to read one of his most famous poems, actually. I'm going to read two of them, one in Spanish and one in English. I won't translate them either way. This poem, part of the characteristic of Roque Dalton was not only was he an extremely political writer, an activist, a historian, a chronicler of the times. He was also a great satirist, especially towards those who pretended to be ultra radicals, ultra revolutionaries. And tragically enough, it was those sort of people who wound up assassinating Roque Dalton in May of 1974. This is his most famous poem called Poem of Love, Buema de Amor. He starts off by mentioning silver roll and gold roll. And it refers to the salaries in building the Panama Canal. Gold roll was for the white workers, everyone else, the Afro Cubans, the Chinese, the Salvadorians were paid in silver. And it's basically a catalog of all the different personalities of Salvadorians. And he ends by calling them all his compatriots, his brothers. I'll read it in Spanish because San Francisco is closer to San Salvador than it is to New York. Poema de Amor. Los que ampliaron el canal de Panama y fueron clasificados como silver roll y no como gold roll. Los que repararon la flota del Pacífico en las bases de California, los que se pudrieron en las cárceles de Guatemala, México, Honduras, Nicaragua, por ladrones, por contrabandistas, por estafadores, por hambrientos, los siempre sospechosos de todo. Me permito revertirle al imperfecto por esquineros sospechosos y con el agravante de ser Salvadorino. Los que llenaron los pares y los burdeles de todos los puertos y las capitales de la zona, el agruta azul, el calzoncito, Happyland. Los sembradores de maíz en plena selva extranjera, los reyes de la página roja, los que nunca saben nadie de dónde son, los mejores artesanos del mundo, los que fueron cocidos a balazos al cruzar la frontera, los que murieron de padulismo, o de las picadas de la escorpión, o la barba amarilla en el infierno de las bananeras, los que llorarán borrachos por el himno nacional bajo el ciclón pacífico o la nieve del norte, los arrimados, los mendigos, los marihuaneros, los guanacos hijos de la gran puta, los que apenitas pudieron regresar, los que tuvieron un poco más de suerte, los eternos indocumentados, los hace lo todo, los vende lo todo, los come lo todo, los primeros en sacar el cuchillo, los tristes, más tristes del mundo, mis compatriotas, mis hermanos. Thank you. Now I asked Joan to spike this one bottle with tequila for me. Thank you, Joan. I'm going to read this last poem of Roque's. And as I was saying, he was a great activist and a great humorist and could see the humor of his own sort of tragic country and his own situation. One time he tells a story. He was going to be executed. This is a true story at six in the morning. That night, midnight, in San Salvador, was struck by an earthquake that split open the walls of this prison cell. He jumped out and escaped. That struck a dolphin. Another of his great poems from the last book that he published in his life, Buemas clandestinos, in which he assumes a voice of five different personas of El Salvador, including that of a woman, to give voice to the voiceless. And this poem is called Acta, Act. And this work was translated by the Roque Dalton Cultural Brigade. And one of the main members of this translation was Jack Hirschman, Act. In the name of those washing others' clothes and cleaning others' filth from the whiteness. In the name of those caring for others' children and selling their labor in the form of maternal love and humiliations. In the name of those living in another's house, which isn't even a kind belly, but a tomb or a jail. In the name of those eating others' crumbs and chewing them with the feeling of a thief. In the name of those living on others' land, the houses and factories and shops, streets, cities and towns, rivers, lakes, volcanoes and mountains, always belonging to others. And that's why the cops and the guards are there, guarding them against us. In the name of those who have nothing but hunger, exploitation, disease, a thirst for justice and water, persecutions and condemnations, loneliness, abandonment, oppression and death. I accuse private property of depriving us of everything. Thank you.